Bull Bear Sock: Power rankings

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Power rankings - week 2

Sox are 13th in the ESPN ranks this week:

"Mark Buehrle, Gavin Floyd and Bartolo Colon have a combined record of 6-1 for a team that has seven quality starts from its pitchers. "

CBS Sports rankings - CBSSports.com

Sox rank 7th in the CBS Sports rankings:

"Taking three of four in Tampa, including effortless knockdowns of Matt Garza and Scott Kazmir, does wonders for a team's confidence ... Ozzie Guillen, responding to a Nick Swisher interview in which Swisher called Joe Girardi the best manager he's played for: 'I guarantee that I will manage a lot longer than he will play.' Oh, snap ... Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Konerko."

CBS seems to be more on point, although these rankings are mostly meaningless (i.e. - ESPN had the Cubs at #1 for most of the year...how'd that work out?). I don't think the Sox have performed at a top 5 level but the pitching has (mostly) been there and the hitting has come around since the KC series.

6 comments:

Pete said...: just a thought but with stephen curry declaring today for the draft, isnt he the perfect fit for the bulls if they dont re-sign BG?; April 23, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Kmart said...: Love the Guillen quote...eff you dirty 30.

Pete --

I love Steph Curry, he's a solid combo guard who can play the point or play the two... and at either position he can fill it up, but I don't think there's a chance he falls out of the lottery.

The Bulls only chance would be to try and package their two first round picks (and possibly Kirk) and try to move up to get Curry.

He would be a nice 6th man addition to a starting 5 of Rose, Salmons, Deng, Ty and Noah.; April 23, 2009 at 12:18 PM
2j said...: Hard to call anyone a "perfect replacement" for BG because BG is not an ideal player. (For the record I'm a huge BG backer, and think the Bulls should re-sign him.) He is good/evil, he can win it for you with buckets or lose it for you with dumb shots. He can drop 42 in the playoffs while his man drops 30 and the GW 3! He is so talented and can absolutely fill it up, but is undersized and a bad defender. He's an ideal sixth man, but his ego (and wallet) demand that he starts.

If we have to let BG go, why would we replace him with a similar player? Why not avoid the trap that he creates?? We should keep BG, but if he goes, isn;t the best option starting Salmons at 2 (isn't that the best option even if BG stays)?

I likfe Curry, but I can;t figure out a team that is eager to have an undersized player. We deal with it because of the other things BG brings, but that doesn't mean that we should necessarily want to replace him with the same "problems"; April 23, 2009 at 12:33 PM
2j said...: As Kmart said, maybe Curry is a better fit because he's more willing to come off the bench, but other than that - I dont see it; April 23, 2009 at 12:34 PM
Kmart said...: I'm as much of a BG supporter as the next guy. I love him 80% of the time and can't stand him 20% of the time. So with that being said...

Realistically there's no way Ben Gordon comes back next year for anything under 10 mil per... so you can pretty much write him off as a 6th man Jim. His douchebag agents have convinced Ben he deserves to be paid the most on the Bulls because he's the leading scorer on the team. Ben has bought into this, so unless you want to give BG, Deng-like money; we can pretty much cross Ben Gordon off the roster for 2009.

Unless of course, no one in the league wants to give Ben more than 10 mil per because of the economy, but I don't see us being that lucky, and I can't even fathom how selfish Ben would become if his pride/ego was damaged to the point where he had to take a 6-7 mil/per contract and come off the bench.

Here's what Stephen Curry gives you: A 21 year old undersized team-first combo guard who has a really high basketball IQ and the best jumpshot in college basketball.

So while similar to Ben in that he is undersized and can stroke it, I think he would give us less 40 pt. games... but also less headaches.

Alas... this conversation is pointless because he's not getting out of the top 10 picks, and not getting past the Knicks unless they luck into Ricky Rubio.; April 23, 2009 at 1:17 PM
DC said...: I really don't think many teams are going to be willing to sign BG for $10 million per year....and it's not totally because of the economy. The summer of 2010 is looming and what GM wants to spend $10 million on BG that might cause them to lose out on a player like Bosh? I wouldn't.

I predict we (or someone else) sign BG to around 5-6 years at around $7-8 million.; April 23, 2009 at 1:30 PM